Gosh darn it! Now it becomes a challenge!!!
Sorry, didn't mean to be demanding...
I tried to scroll up and see what horrible thing I said about Dungeon World, but couldn't find it. If I gave the impression that I didn't care for it, I apologize--I actually think DW is really, really swell. The mechanics of the game system are clean and simple, and the way they handle partial success is very interesting. I am really intrigued by the collaborative nature of the world-building, as well as the sand-boxy nature of adventure creation and exploration. It is a thick book, but that's not because of the complexity of the rules. The huge length of the text is really due to the writing style (and the very graphic book design, frankly), along with a need to explain to first-time players exactly what the heck DW is, because it's really not much like D&D at all--and I mean all that in a good way, for the most part.
My only concern about DW--and this is a purely a matter of personal taste--is that for me, tactical combat is a big part of the tabletop RPG experience. I
really like to push miniatures around on a map, and DW (or any "theatre-of-the-mind" RPG, for that matter) leaves me pining for the battlemat.
I read this--unlike DW, it's a very quick read--and I like it for its elegance and simplicity. It does a good job of boiling down White Box D&D into a very streamlined rule set, but it does retain the Gygax's Vancian spell system that I have hated for 40 years. I'm confused by its rules for armor--if they work the way I read them, I don't like them, and if they work some other way, I can't figure them out. I appreciate how lean the writing of the rule set is, but in a couple of places--like armor--a very brief example might have helped.
And of course, Black Hack blows off tactical combat, so again, no minis and no battlemat.
Just picked this up, printed it out and speed-read it about a week ago. I found it intriguing, though I seem to recall there was some aspect if it that seemed off to me. I'll have to re-read it to remember what it was, or if I'm mis-remembering. But my first impression was generally positive.
All the rest of the titles you list, I'll have to read and consider. I'm a big fan of free, cheap, and PWYW, so that's a great assignment you've given me.
Since I started this thread, I've read a
bunch of OSR rule sets, though. Most of them, like Swords and Wizardry, White Box, Labyrinth Lord, seemed to be very faithful recreations of 0e D&D, faithfully retaining both the strengths and the flaws of the old game essentially by collecting, organizing, and clarifying the original rules. So if you really liked 70s-style D&D, you'll really like those games...but they don't do much to apply 40 years of advancement in game-design art to smooth out the rough edges of the old game.
To me, Black Hack and Dungeon World are braver, in that they are more willing to mess with the mechanics of the game--and in DW's case, even the general GM/player paradigm of roleplaying--to apply modern game design to the challenge of recreating what was good in the old game, while fixing or diminishing what was awkward and clunky. I'm pretty sure I'd
run DW or Black Hack before I'd run any of the more traditional OSR clones, but as I've said before, I'll
play whatever the GM is willing to run.
Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures - the forward-thinking retrocloneThat being said, just a couple of days ago, I downloaded
Beyond the Wall, which I really like. (I bought it when it was half price, during the 'Teach your kids to game' sale.) At first glance, it seems like a pretty traditional retroclone, but the more I read it, the more I realize how much it does to clean up and modernize the old game.
It uses the standard 6 attributes, and offers only 3 character classes (warrior, rogue, mage), so at first it seems pretty familiar and limited. But it also includes character playbooks, which replace roll-three-dice character creation with a path that fills in your character's background and connections to the other players and the campaign world, while determining your attribute and skill values in ways that make sense with the background info. Despite the small number of base classes, the variability available through the playbooks assures a really wide variety of characters are possible; when you add to it the simple system it offers for multi-classing, you can create a really amazing range of characters within the rules. In choosing a class, all you're really deciding is whether your character is going to rely primarily on brawn, expertise, or spell-casting to solve problems; the character playbooks will let you really differentiate characters within their classes.
What about clerics, you ask? It's perfectly practical to create a healer/buffer/undead-banisher within the mage class by picking the appropriate spells. If you want your divine caster to wear armor and swing a morningstar (or a sword, for that matter), make a multiclass warrior-mage, and you've got yourself Knight Templar. In fact, you can make pretty much any familiar D&D class through selection of spells, skills and multiclass pairings. A bard is a rogue-mage with enchantment spells, performance skills, and (possibly) without stealth and pick-pocketing. A druid is a rogue-mage with nature spells and outdoorsy skills. You get the idea--you just need to be a little creative.
Beyond the Wall very nearly tosses Gygaxian magic out the window, which earns it big points with me. Mages get cantrips, spells and rituals. While the raw power of cantrips is limited, they are not like the parlor tricks in D&D--each one is very flexible, and creative players will constantly be coming up with innovative ways to apply them. Spells are the most D&D-like magic in Beyond the Wall, but the mechanics are both simpler and less rigid than D&D spells. Rituals are what they sound like--long, involved magics that produce long-term effects, integrated into the game in a way that will let mages of any level feel powerful without totally unbalancing the game. As an added bonus, the cantrip, spell, and ritual lists are rather different than in the old game, so it's not just a rehash of Magic Missile and Tenser's Floating Disk.
Beyond the Wall retains the old game's goofy five class-based saving throws (Poison, Breath Weapon, Polymorph, Spell, or Item), but offers an "optional" rule for saving throws based on how you resist or avoid mishap (by fortitude, reflex, or will), which is simpler and makes more sense. This could be improved even more with a house rule that treats saves directly as an attribute check against either CON, DEX, or WIS, perhaps with a level-based modifier.
And although the Beyond the Wall rules are capable of handling most any old-school FRP world, the game and especially the playbooks really embraces a very specific style of fantasy world, set in northern Europe or the British Isles during the Dark Ages (after Rome, before the Normans), with a lot of interaction (and conflict) with the Fae realm. The elves aren't Tolkein's Eldar--they are the mysterious and terrifying faerie lords of Celtic myth. The dwarves aren't Thorin's band of homeless questers--they are the supernatural smiths and gatekeepers of Norse myth. The game draws on Lloyd Alexander's Prydain novels more than it does Tolkein. Any of the various retellings of the King Arthur saga would fit into the world of Beyond the Wall, as would Keith Taylor's Bard series (am I the only one who remembers Felimid mac Fal?), as well as Disney's Brave. I'm a real sucker for celtic-style, Realm-of-Faerie fantasy.
I'm still finishing up reading the core rules, then I'll start on some of the supplements. Bottom line, Beyond the Wall does a better job of making something new and better out of the old game than the straight-up retro-clones, without totally reinventing it the way Dungeon World does. That being said, there's a lot of Dungeon World's collaborative world-building and sand-box narrative play in Beyond the Wall, which I'm pretty sure is a good thing. And while it doesn't have specific rules for playing out combat on the tabletop (at least not in the core rulebook), but anyone familiar with the old game should be able to adapt or borrow a very small number of house rules to put Beyond the Wall on a battlemat.
If I were going to run a game this weekend--which I'm not, sadly--my system of choice has now switched from Dungeon World to Beyond the Wall. I'll report back if that changes any time soon.